:classical-building: What if the freshest insight on how to talk about 21st century transformations isn’t found in a snappy TEDx Talk or an MBA program but in the works of a philosopher born almost 2,500 years ago? I’ve always found the works of classical Greece indispensable to understanding the world today, including the world of business. Aristotle, for one, had a lot to say about knowledge that is not only relatable but useful for companies undergoing great change. In my research and advisory work, I stress the importance of listening to the questions that people ask to understand not only what motivates them but also what they don’t get. I had a great opportunity recently to do this when I hosted a panel with 500 attendees discussing the challenges of digital transformation. These were people tasked with implementing change in large companies, but it was clear from their questions that they had very different understandings of what needed to be done. It occurred to me that Aristotle’s ideas about knowledge domains would help leaders translate these ways of thinking and talking about transformation into a shared language that would make the transformation more successful.

There’s no denying it—today’s world moves to the beat of a digital drum. With the dawning of Web 3.0 and the metaverse in motion, now is a crucial time for businesses to embrace digital transformation. Did you know? Spending on digital transformation is likely to exceed $1.8 trillion by 2025 as businesses across every possible sector update their internal strategies and processes for success in the modern age. With an ever-expanding choice of channels and touchpoints to explore, marketing is one of the most vital catalysts for growth in the age of digitalization. Digital marketing transformation is no longer an organizational bolt-on—now it’s a crucial component of commercial survival. Despite this fact, there are still many roadblocks to digital marketing transformation. These issues or ‘push backs’ stunt organizational growth and put brands at risk of being left drowning in the digital dust. But, what are the roadblocks to digital marketing transformation, exactly? Let’s take a look.

We did it again! Thrive has made The Boston Business Journal’s exclusive 2022 Fast 50 list, which represents the 50 fastest-growing private companies in Massachusetts. The Fast 50 companies are selected and ranked based on a formula that counts revenue growth from 2018 to 2021. Thrive’s NextGen Technology Platform is designed to optimize IT business application performance via a secure and redundant Cloud-based infrastructure. Thrive’s cutting-edge approach creates a superior, day-to-day IT experience for businesses in Boston and beyond. The platform helps manage your Cloud, Collaboration, Cybersecurity, Disaster Recovery, Digital Transformation, Global Network Management and Traditional Managed Services capabilities at any time and from anywhere.

:bookmark-tabs: PDF: Refining Digital Transformation through Asset Centricity Many organizations are working diligently on digital transformation initiatives to enhance their customer experiences, improve business outcomes, and develop new revenue-generating services. But they’re also encountering a common roadblock to success: the tendency to digitize in functional silos, a practice that limits organizations’ ability to achieve their stated goals. A cross-functional approach to digital transformation is key to breaking down these silos. But for organizations that manufacture, manage, and service critical assets, digital transformation initiatives may need to extend beyond just expanding across functions and establish a common digital thread or platform that unifies business functions and supports ongoing innovation. #digital_transformation #innovation

Fundamentally, most digital technologies provide possibilities for efficiency gains and customer intimacy. But if people lack the right mindset to change and the current organizational practices are flawed, DT will simply magnify those flaws. Five key lessons have helped us lead our organizations through digital transformations that succeeded.

A CRM system should be more than just a static database of customer contacts. The CRM should ingest the multichannel interactions that businesses are having with consumers. The offer engine or e-commerce website should be integrated in real time with the wealth of data that the business has about its customers. That means systems that support inventory, marketing, sales and customer service all have to integrate with systems handling other business domains. This is the digital transformation that brands need.

Long before the COVID-19 pandemic, companies were already seeing the significant benefits that Industry 4.0 technologies can provide when adopted at scale. The pandemic’s disruptions have underscored that integrating advanced technologies better equips organizations to achieve operational excellence—the foundation of long-term resilience to and sustained competitive advantage. Recent evidence shows that the move towards digital transformation is gaining momentum across virtually all sectors. In fact, in a survey of more than 400 global manufacturing companies, 94 percent of respondents indicated that Industry 4.0 helped them to keep their operations running during the crisis, and 56 percent said the digital transformation they undertook was essential to their pandemic responses. Conversely, for those companies that hadn’t scaled—or even begun—their digital transformation, the past year has served as a serious wake-up call to review operational strategies and refocus on Industry 4.0 capabilities. #innovation